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iPhone's "Mystery App" Is H.264 YouTube
Rebelgecko writes "It turns out the iPhone's mystery app is a custom YouTube viewer. The iPhone will play YouTube's videos using the H.264 codec(as will the AppleTV after an upgrade) for higher quality. From the look of it, it will take advantage of the iPhone's screen design and touch capabilities much more than watching videos in the iPhone's version of Safari would. The videos can be streamed via a Wi-Fi connection or the EDGE network."
That is *sweet*!
Shouldn't the inbuilt browser be able to view YouTube anyways?
It is really interesting, from a marketing point of view, how Apple takes things that would be ho-hum for any other brand or company, and suddenly turns it into front page news with the whole "mystery feature" game. They do this over and over and over, and nobody ever seems to catch on.
I mean, realistically, it's just another smartphone in an already overcrowded market. But it's front page news every day.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Looks like it pays off to have a google member sitting on your board. You get access to the phone's "real" API's.
This is more evidence that if you want to write a killer iPhone app, Safari+AJAX may not have the power you need. Apple sure didn't find that combo to have the horespower when it went to implement Google Maps and now YouTube.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
if they could only make it to, like, surf myspace too. that'd make it totally worth the money. i'd buy two of them just so i can do both at the same time.
They are using H.264 instead of Flash for the iPhone and Apple TV.
I don't know how many times my wife has been driving and I, sitting in the passenger seat bored out of my mind, thought to myself...
{dream sequence}
Damn I wish I could see a short clip of kittens doing cute things or kids doing lightsaber battles
{/dream sequence}
My life is now complete.
load "$",8,1
Also, there's a USA Today article on iPhone today with the first new information from AT&T on the launch (even though it's not much):
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/telecom/2 007-06-20-at&t-iphone-push_N.htm
AT&T girds for iPhone launch on June 29
By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY
For consumers eager to get their hands on an Apple iPhone, here's the good news: It will be available in all 1,800 AT&T phone stores at 6 p.m. sharp on June 29.
The bad news? "We fully expect one or more of our stores to run out of stock on the first or second day -- my guess is the first day," says Larry Carter, senior vice president of sales for AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive U.S. distributor.
To help accommodate as much foot traffic as possible, AT&T phone stores will stay open an extra hour -- until 10 p.m. -- on the first day.
To get "iReady" for the big day, Carter says AT&T added 2,000 extra sales people to stores. Half will be there just to help handle the expected early crush of buyers. The other half, he says, will stay long-term to help with extra customers the iPhone is expected to draw to AT&T's stores.
Crowd control on launch day is a concern. In some markets -- Carter declined to name them -- AT&T is working with local law enforcement on crowd-control plans. It also has alerted landlords at shopping malls and other phone store locations to make sure nobody is caught off guard.
Not all stores are equal
Carter would not say which stores will have the biggest iPhone stockpiles, but allowed that iPod users are a "natural market" for the smart phone. As such, he says, stores in areas with big numbers of iPod users -- such as New York City, Chicago and much of California -- will be well stocked.
Does that mean that those stores will have more iPhones than stores in, say, Richmond, Va., or Florida? "Yes," he says. "It's just common sense."
If your local store sells out, Carter says sales people will take mail orders, and devices will be shipped in 3 to 5 days, inventory permitting. "Ultimately, we will meet every customer's desire to have one," Carter says.
To discourage sCalpers, AT&T plans to limit how many phones each customer can buy. Carter declined to cite the number, saying only that AT&T would try to prevent "hoarding and reselling."
New service plans for iPhone
There are other surprises in the works for June 29. In addition to launching the iPhone that day, Carter says AT&T also will announce new service plans for it.
He declined to be specific, but says plans will be customized for the iPhone. Translation: The iPhone may offer cool features such as unlimited Web browsing, but you'll have to pay for them.
Carter says the additional fees shouldn't be a surprise. "Regardless of which device you're using today, you pay us a certain amount for (voice) minutes, and you also pay us for data units," he says. "That is also true on the iPhone."
No amount of planning will help, however, if Apple is unable to supply enough phones. "That's what we stay awake at night thinking about," Carter says.
It's also out of AT&T's control. Manufacturing is being overseen by Apple, which also maintains control of design, customer care (for the device, not monthly service), advertising and more.
Apple, famously secretive about its products, has been mum about its Apple Store sales plans. So far, it has not allowed AT&T sales staff access to iPhones so they can get comfortable using them before the big day. "Apple wanted to launch it that way," Carter shrugs.
Only as good as network
One thing AT&T does control, however, is the network on which the iPhone will depend. While network reliability might not have the sex appeal of an iPhone, it could spell the difference between the device becoming a runaway success -- or a flop.
imagine the data charges from watching youtube all day on your iphone
Actually, I think the killer app will be uploading to YouTube from the iPhone. It would be predicated upon the chipset having H.264 encoding capabilities as well, but I see this being a potentially huge win for Apple if they could pull it off. It's the logical extension of what they're attempting to do with the platform, and it would transform video blogging and bring it to the mainstream.
Am I the only one that sees the iPhone as only an (awesome) entertainment device? I might be wrong but I didn't see any spreadsheet or word processing apps. I realize a widget could be written to run some local version of the google office apps but isn't it a bit wasteful?
It would be so awesome of they released a developers kit (and wishful thinking, make it open to everyone). Too bad it's impossible (viruses, ugly inefficient apps and all that).
Whatever the outcome, I'll pay 500 to whoever writes the first 95% compatible full speed widgetized NES emulator with a comfortable input system.
Oh yeah, and gives me an iPhone to test it intensively for five or six years or until the next iPhone comes out.
Looks like they're excellent at partnering with Google(YouTube). And pretty smart about it, too. That H.264 hardware decoder in the iPhone won't sap the battery like a crappy flash player would do.
This is just an iPhone-friendly version of youtube. IPhone users will view it with Safari. It's been public knowledge since the 16th of June.
visit it here
read old news articles about it here
-- Boycott Shell
Higher quality codec can mean, as the article assumes, higher quality/same bitrate. But it can also mean same quality/lower bitrate.
I've used EDGE a great deal on T-Mobile's network, and I can tell you that while it works, it's not exactly speedy. While much of the problem is with latency, the bandwidth isn't great either, with 64kbps being a typical top speed. Supposedly AT&T are upgrading their network to make sure that EDGE's higher, theoretical, speeds are attainable, but I'd be surprised if users get to experience anything better than 128kbps, and then only when the network isn't congested.
My assumption is that the use of H.264 is to reduce bandwidth requirements, making YouTube on iPhone a practical proposition, without compromising too much on quality, not to actually improve the quality.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Maybe the editors did catch that lack of continuity, and they decided to leave it in. Maybe they put it there intentionally.
Why would they do that? Simple, to generate a lot of discussion and marketing buzz, and maybe even to get additional exposure for the iPhone on Slashdot.
Well, YouTube videos are delivered at 320x240 resolution, whereas the iPhone has a 480x320 display to work with... of course, much of the source material uploaded to YouTube may be in a lower resolution anyway, since the content authors may not have anticipated having higher resolutions available for their videos later on.
Even at the same resolution and bitrate, however, H.264 is a very high-quality codec and is bound to have higher video quality with less blurring and blocking than Flash Video. The reason YouTube uses flash is that it's loaded on damn near every desktop computer and doesn't require spawning a separate player, installing decoders, etc. But it actually makes sense when targeting a fixed platform like the iPhone or AppleTV to take advantage of the better video formats that are available.
Also, I'd personally love it if YouTube let me set an option in my profile to view H.264 videos as I'm browsing the website. Keep the videos in flash by default, but let people who know they can view embedded H.264 take advantage of it.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
The summary says AppleTV will get it after an upgrade, so presumably any desktop mac will also have that as an option.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
I have my Blackberry Pearl set up as a bluetooth modem for my Macbook Pro and it is on AT&T's EDGE network in NYC. A two minute youtube video takes about four minutes to load, so you can start watching at about the halfway mark.
Actually, Sorenson Spark and TrueMotion VP6 are highly competitive with the H.264 codec. My guess is that the H.264 transition has less to do with bandwidth and more to do with the iPhone's design. Apple currently uses H.264 for all of its downloadable movies and videos. (Sans a few minor exceptions like the Aquaman pilot.) Thus the iPhone already has software/hardware to support high-quality playback of the H.264 codec. This allows the phone to provide more features with the video stream (e.g. live resizing, preview in place, fast-seek, etc.) than are possible with the Flash toolkit.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I can understand not reading the article, because that takes time that you wouldn't have available for masturbating to hentai.
But can you at least expend the modicum of effort necessary to read the story's title before commenting?
You don't understand how Apple has this effect because you, like everyone else who's a registered member of Slashdot, are a geek.
Geeks have a higher tolerance for poor user interface design, I mean heck look at how popular Linux, BSD and Unix are amongst the geek set. The "CLI" or Command Line Interface is actually PREFERRED by this set. You take two computers, say either a Windows based PC or Macintosh and compare it to a GUI'less Linux setup and a geek would know that both computers can do anything. A regular person however would consider the Linux computer to be useless because they wouldn't know how to nor would they be interested in taking the time to learn how to use it. If it isn't point and click, it loses. Geeks don't mind investing the time though, they LOVE to tinker.
This is why you consider the iPhone to be nothing special. I own a Treo 700p that can already do all the things the iPod can do just about and there are certainly Windows Mobile and Symbian phones that also do most of what the iPhone does at a much lower price. But thats NOT THE POINT. Its not about matching features for features. Its about making sure that people will actually be able and WILLING to use the features that your product DOES have.
I am absolutely positively certain that regular folks will get more use out of their iPhones then they will out of their Treos, HTCs, Motorola Qs, Blackberries, Nokias...etc simply because the iPhone has the better interface. Regular folks have higher standards when it comes to interfaces. Either its going to be well designed or it won't be used. Geeks on the other hand will put up with crappy user interfaces because they are blinded by the features underneath. The truest test is when a user buys a device on their own and no longer needs their "geek" friend/neighbor/co-worker to set it up for them. Thats the iPhone.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
After the Ipod came out there was a period (and to an extent this continue) where Ipods just got nicked left right and center because of Apple's stupid idea to give you white earphones, clearly marking you out as a target to get mugged. Now with the iphone, not only have you go the earphones, but you watch videos, so you are holding out a $500 phone at roughly arms length, in public. Am I not the only person who sees this as an incredible easy target for theives? And of course, when I'm at home I just use my computer, so I question the sensibility of actually using these features while "Roaming" (Personally I think that's a silly term anyway, I would not describe anything I ever do as "Roaming")
There is an easy way to tell... on the drive to work immediately following the 29th look for the number of cars wrapped around trees.
load "$",8,1
First, "Flash Video" is commonly H.263, not some magically Adobe-only codec. You don't need flash to play the video.
Second, the article title talks about YouTube providing H.264 content, which is a format the iPhone and iPod are already known to play.
Obviously you can use it for streaming as well, though I don't know if you get the same bandwidth comparisons vs. the most popular streaming-video codecs, since there are so many of those out there. According to one of the Wikipedia pages, newer iPods support H.264 video formats, so they're capitalizing on those sales. And they're probably cutting down on the bandwidth required for YouTube, which is really important in a mobile data environment.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Well, properly implemented H.264 hardware encoders shouldn't "zap batteries in their sleep" and should be much more efficient than Flash decoding on the CPU. I'm sure that it's also possible to design one poorly, but my guess is that Apple was aware of this potential. Incorporating a hardware decoder in the design also offloads work from the CPU, leaving it free to do other stuff while the video is playing, which probably also results in smoother video playback on a lower powered device like iPhone.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Yes, it is, in fact. It uses the same 30-pin dock connector as all current iPods and will physically fit in Made for iPod products. Whether or not they do some weird things with the software that prevent the iPhone from responding to these accessories is something no one outside of a very small number of people at Apple know, but I'd guess no.
They're selling this thing as a full-featured iPod nano (with some new features, even). I'd imagine that the small reserve of people who still haven't bought an iPod (ignoring those who never, ever will, no matter what) would further translate into an accessory market. The thing is almost exactly the width of a current iPod, the dock connector is the same and in the same location, and it syncs with iTunes and not some new application just for the iPhone. All signs point to "yes, it will work with iHome and all of those other dock accessories."
If any tool requires you to use "critical thinking skills" in comparison to a competing tool that does not, than the former tool "fails" at being the best it can be. Critical thinking skills should be reserved for making actual decisions, not simply getting a product to work.
"Decent" interfaces that you point out on competing smartphones just aren't good enough anymore when something better comes along. That something better is the iPhone. All that "decent" stuff that came before is although still quite usable, now dated and obsolete. Its yesterdays news.
Your position is almost comical. People spend hundreds of dollars on these devices and you are actually opposed to a product so easy to use that its "chewing your food for you." You personally, after spending this much money on a device actually WANT to have to do mental work to get the most out of it. Thats like spending full price for a car that you have to put together yourself when everyone else's is pre-constructed and drivable off the lot. Ha ha worked a car analogy in! Damn these users for wanting to get the most bang for their buck! Why they're wimps! REAL users know better than to expect exlimplary service and products when they hand over their cash!
Perhaps you should start a company that would sell devices based on your design preferences.
1. A hammer that has a loose neck that will only stiffen strong enough to be used after you enter into a keypad on the handle the first 56 digits of Pi.
2. A light switch that requires you to recite the Gettysburgh Address in order to function.
3. A weight scale that requires you to tap dance like Fred Astaire for 15 minutes before it will tell you your weight.
4. And lastly a dishwasher with a panel on the front that will require you to specify the exact amounts of water used, at what pressure and what temperatures and what amounts of detergent to be released at 50 different intervals during the wash cycle before you can use it.
After all, we want to make sure that absolutely NO ONE is forced to use a product that makes completeing tasks TOO EASY. If you are forced to use a product that spoon feeds you everything it stifles the development of CRITICAL THINKING skills.
You could call your company, Idiot Enterprises Incorporated.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I personally find more interest in video on Google Video - they seem to usually be full length videos, such as documentaries, etc. YouTube is good too, but why not have access to bot... on the iPhone and AppleTV??? Make it happne, Apple!
Absolutely. The low EDGE speeds are supposedly mitigated by the fact that the phone will automatically use wifi if it is available. I don't see this working well, in practice. The reason I got an internet plan with my cell provider was precisely because most of the time, I'm not in an area with wifi, or I'm in an area with locked down wifi. Add to this the recent problems people have been having for using wide-open wifi without the permission of the owner, and this just looks like a disaster waiting to happen (though, perhaps, the iPhone will spur people to either lock down their access points, or will spur legislation explicitly defining when it is ok to connect to a wide-open access point.)
When I'm at home, I'm going to use my own Internet connection. When I'm at a coffee shop, I'll be using my notebook. At work, I'll have the work's connection. I guess if I'm at a friend's house without my notebook, this might be useful, but hey, I could just borrow his computer.
No, I think that Youtube won't be the killer app that Apple expects it to be. Although, who knows? If people don't think about how slow it's going to be over EDGE, it might be just enough to convince some people (who otherwise wouldn't) to buy. But I doubt it.
'cause it has wifi.